


Who Loved No Man

by Eglantine



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Love, canon character death, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-08
Updated: 2011-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-27 02:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eglantine/pseuds/Eglantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sir Sagramore told the assembled knights of Sir Tristan's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Loved No Man

Sir Sagramore told the assembled knights of Sir Tristan’s death. And really, wasn’t it just his luck? He’d never been to Cornwall—never gone south of Camelot, preferring to ride north towards Scotland with the Orkney brothers, or east, towards home. But he went, just the once, and was overtaken by King Mark’s train, bound for the sea, for Brittany. He agreed to go with them. He returned with them, too, bearing the bodies of Queen Isolde and Sir Tristan of Lyonesse.

Sir Dinadan, who was often in Cornwall—was, indeed, a Cornishman born and bred, try as he might to hide that awful accent—was not there at that time. He sat with the other knights as Sir Sagramore told the tale that Mark had told him. But he did not shake his head in sorrow like the King, or cry shock and outrage and woe like the other knights, or weep like the ladies and one or two of the smallest kitchen pages. He sat very still, and very quiet, and when Sagamore returned to his chamber that evening, Sir Dinadan was waiting outside the door.

He leaned against the wall, his long, lanky frame hunched up and folded in on itself like those funny marsh birds Sagramore had seen on his travels and could not name. He wondered if Dinadan could—they said Dinadan knew the name of every man, woman, and pageboy at court, and the face of every knight. They said he was the only one who could not be fooled with colored armor and blank devices in a tournament or in the wood- that he would always recognize a friend.

“How may I be of service, Sir Dinadan?” he asked. Dinadan looked up and, of course, smiled.

“I have a question for you,” he said. “I hope I am not disturbing you.” He sounded sincere enough, but there was mockery in the quirk of his smile and the tilt of his head, and Sagramore, who thought himself good at reading men’s faces, could not tell if it was directed at him, or at Dinadan himself.

“No, not at all. Would you come in?” he asked. Dinadan hesitated an instant at that, but then nodded and followed Sagramore into the chamber.

It was not a large room—certainly not so large as that of Lancelot or Kay—but it served well enough for a knight who passed as little time at court as Sagramore did. Dinadan hovered by the door.

“Well, then,” Sagramore said once it became clear that Dinadan was not going to speak first. “What is your question?”

“I wanted to know— I only wanted to know what you thought of my home country. You’ve cringed often enough at this accent of Tristan’s and mine—tell me, did it make you mad? Deaf, perhaps, to be surrounded by—God!” he burst out suddenly, and turned away. Sagramore watched, uncomfortable and uncertain, as Dinadan leaned his head and hands against the wall, his shoulders shaking silently. Sagramore was not sure it was a comfort when Dinadan turned and he saw that it was with laughter.

“I,” Dinadan said, “am like the mad prophets of old. I have grown so addled with my folly I cannot speak sense even when I wish to. Please, Sir Sagramore, I pray you pardon me.”

“You need not ask it,” Sagramore said. Dinadan inclined his head in silent thanks. “You were Sir Tristan’s companion. I had assumed you wished to ask about his-”

“Were you there?” Dinadan jumped in, as if he could not bear to let the word be spoken. “Tell me, were you there? And tell me too, did it happen in the very moment of it?”

“Did—did what happen?”

“This change. This magic, that turned him from a man to a legend. For when I last saw him, he was still Tristan, a knight of the Round Table and a hero, perhaps, but a man. But this demi-god that they,” he fluttered his hand vaguely towards the door, towards the rest of court, “have spent the night feasting and lauding—I know him not.”

“He was a man still when he died, for all that I could tell,” Sagramore said. Dinadan nodded and cast down his gaze. “I half thought to see you there, when we came to Brittany.”

“I should have been.” He looked up again and smiled, crooked and edged with the near-madness of too much loss, grief that does not know any better way to show itself. It was a look Sagramore certainly knew well, keeping as he did with the Orkney brothers, and he went to Dinadan then and laid a hand on his arm. Dinadan had to look down to meet Sagramore’s eye, but he did, and then he stooped and kissed him full on the mouth.

When Sagramore did not pull away, Dinadan pulled closer, harder, as if trying to find the taste of Tristan’s last words on Sagramore’s lips. And in the early morning, his bedding all in a tangle around Dinadan’s impossibly long limbs, Sagramore heard Sir Dinadan, who loved no woman and spared mocking no man, weep.


End file.
